Seeking clarity on stop and frisk

Updated 4:40 pm, Saturday, July 21, 2012

In the confusing, often eye-glazing world of political jargon, stop and frisk sounds refreshingly easy to understand. Police stop people and, yep, frisk them.

But in the upside-down world of San Francisco politics, it seems nobody - least of all Mayor Ed Leehimself - knows exactly what the mayor is proposing in his quest to get guns off the city's streets.

Last month, Lee told The Chronicle's editorial board he had "a good conversation about stop and frisk" with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and that the policy "is under consideration" in San Francisco.

"Some people say I'm the nice mayor," Lee said. "But when it comes to death and violence, I'm not that nice."

They say nice guys finish last, and the mayor is definitely on the losing end of this debate.

On Tuesday afternoon, the City Hall steps were filled with politicians and people carrying signs reading "Am I suspicious?" and calling stop and frisk the new Jim Crow, because it's been proven elsewhere to predominantly be used against African American and Latino young men.

Representing 50 community organizations and all racial groups, the protesters walked upstairs to deliver 2,000 signatures decrying stop and frisk to the mayor's office. Later, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution opposing bringing the controversial policy to San Francisco.

Lee's response? Issuing a statement saying he wanted "to be very clear" about his intention but perhaps muddling matters even more.

"I have not considered implementing a policy in San Francisco that would violate anyone's constitutional rights or that would result in racial profiling," Lee said in the statement. "I have stated that I am willing to look at what other cities are doing to reduce gun violence, including cities like New York and Philadelphia that both have stop-and-frisk programs."

To experts, though, that's like saying, "I'm an avowed vegetarian, and I like eating meat."

Barry Krisberg, past president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, said it's "about impossible" to adopt a stop-and-frisk policy that doesn't include racial profiling. "I'm still kind of stunned that San Francisco is even considering this," he said. "Ed Lee has a history of being a civil rights advocate and a lawyer, and I can't imagine another California city that would even think about doing this."

"There's nothing new about that," Schlosser said. "The way the mayor has raised it as some new policy can't help but lead one to believe what's on his mind is what exists in New York."

There, an officer can stop and frisk pretty much anybody.

Police Chief Greg Suhr said San Francisco officers have been stopping people based on reasonable suspicion since the inception of the Police Department - and that no policy would be adopted that includes racial profiling or that violates civil rights.

We asked Suhr what sets Lee's proposal apart from current policy, and he said, "He wants the gun violence to stop." Suhr noted June saw an uptick in gun violence, including a rash of homicides in Sunnydale, the projects in Visitacion Valley.

"The mayor and I didn't sleep a lot in June," Suhr said.

So maybe the mayor's tired. But seeming refreshed Tuesday afternoon, he still struggled to answer reporters' questions about his intentions for stop and frisk.

"I will evolve as we go through this, evolve names of programs," he said. "If it means rephrasing that, I'll be clearly open to that, but I've got to get the guns."

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